He believes the burger could herald a global food revolution, with artificial meat products appearing in supermarkets within a decade.

The project has even received the financial backing of Google founder Sergey Brin, who reportedly ploughed £215,000 of his personal fortune towards the project.

The burger was pan fired before being eaten by two volunteers

I think it’s a very good start, it proved that we can do this, that we can make it and to provide a start to build upon

Professor Mark Post

After sampling his creation for the first time yesterday Prof Post said: “I think it’s a very good start, it proved that we can do this, that we can make it and to provide a start to build upon - I am very pleased with it.”

The stem cells are cultivated in a nutrient broth, allowing them to proliferate 30-fold.

They are then combined with an elastic collagen in a culture dish where the cells form into chunks of muscle.

Electrical stimulation is used to make the muscle strips contract and “bulk up” before the thousands of beef strips are minced up, together with 200 pieces of lab-grown animal fat, and moulded into a patty. Around 20,000 meat strands are needed to make one burger.

Other ingredients include salt, egg powder and breadcrumbs. Red beetroot juice and saffron are added to provide authentic beef colouring.

The burger's creator was pleased with the result

One advantage of test-tube meat is that it can be customised for health, by boosting levels of polyunsaturated fats.

Manufacturing steaks instead of minced meat presents a much greater technical challenge, requiring some kind of blood vessel system to carry nutrients and oxygen to the centre of the tissue. Making artificial chicken or fish from stem cells might be easier.

Before the burger was cooked in butter by chef Richard McGeown Mr Brin said: “There are basically three things that can happen going forward - one is that we can all become vegetarian. I don’t think that’s really likely.

“The second is we ignore the issues and that leads to continued environmental harm and the third option is we do something new.

“Some people think this is science fiction - it’s not real, it’s somewhere out there. I actually think that’s a good thing.”

Tonight bookmakers Ladbrokes offered odds of just 4/6 lab-grown burgers will end up on sale in the UK within the next 10 years, with Waitrose the 3/1 favourites to be the first supermarket to stock them.

High street burger chains McDonalds and Burger King are 100/1to serve artificially-produced meat before the end of next year.

And having already shown his taste for high-end hamburgers, Chancellor George Osborne is 1,000/1 to eat one in preparation for next year’s Budget.